Multi Commander

Sunday, January 12, 2014

After some delays Multi Commander v4.0 is now out. Over 450+ changes since v3.5.1.
The focus for this release have been to fix various UI issue and add better customization options for some places Also a lot of fixes and stability issues are fixed

Sunday, December 15, 2013

Some of other changes that are included in the coming version are....Quick Look'n'Feel Setup
The dialog for quickly changing between different look and feel setup have tweaked.
There is no longer a separate dialog if the "Customize" option is selected.
The customize option is listed in the same Window.
Also the options in the customize part does now use the Multi Language system.

NET:
When going to NET: or (selecting network in the device dropdown or device toolbar) Multi Commander will no longer hang until it have scanned the network for computers.
You can now press the "Scan network" item that is listed to initiate a scan. You can also access the settings for network browsing directly from here.

When it scans the network for computer it will do so in the background so that the main user interface in Multi Commander will not be locked.

It is also possible to right click on a found computers and there you can select to PIN it.
A pinned computer will always show up, Even if a network scan did not found it. It can be useful when running in portable mode where you are moving round between different computers and networks.

Multi Commander will also remember and cache all found computer between restarts.

Zip FileSystem Extension
The Zip file system extension now got a settings page that is access from the configuration menu.
There you can configure what codepage ZIP should use. And if it should use UTF-8 when creating new archives.

RAR FileSystem Extension
The Rar filesystem extension is update and are now using the unrar 5.01 source. So it should now be possible to unpack rar archives that are created with RAR 5.

Columns
When customizing column it is now possible to add extra padding/margin to the left and right side.

ShowHidden Files
Then Show Hidden files icon button on the toolbar is now show different if the option for show hidden files is on or off.

Splash
Multi Commander also have a new splash screen. This image was create and provided by Patrick of Chasing Carrot

Colors, Icon , And Columns
From people who like to customize and tweak things colors, icons and columns are the some of the most common customization that people ask for.

I got requests for allowing the progress bar colors to be customized.
And that is now possible.
Before it was only possible to customize the color for the progress bar that is shown in the status bar in the main window.
Now it will be possible to also change the progress bar colors for the progress window.
Also the configuration for how to customize the progress bar colors have been change and is now a lot easier.

The colors are changed under Core Settings under the Color tab

Example on how it can look.

Button Panel
Another customization option that have been added is that the button panel now also support icons.

The button icon is changed in the button editor and the path for the icon do support relative path so it will work well even on portable installations.

Column Customization
The customization of columns in the Explorer panel have been simplified. Before you could toggle a column on/off and that would temporary hide the column, but not really remove it. And there was one dialog for modifying current column layout and one for modifying the columns set.

Now you can no longer temporary toggle columns on/off, when a column is toggle of it is removed.
And the two customization windows have been merged together and there is now only one customization window and you change both current layout and alternative columns sets in that.
Also "Restore Columns" option have been added that will restore current layout to the previously selected column layout (or default)

Friday, December 13, 2013

Another feature asked for a lot is a way to be able to do faster filtered selections and better way to change the view filter in the Explorer Panel.

In v4.0 there are ways that might solve such requests.

Quick Selection (also unselection)

By pressing the right mouse button on the Add Selection/Remove Selection toolbar buttons a dropdown menu with quick selection option will be shown.

It will show quick selection option for all available file extension at the current location.
Also a couple of configurable options are shown. By default there are set for Text files, Audio Files and so on. But it is possible to modify them and add even more your self.

The number shown after the extension is the number of files that will be selected / unselected.

View Filters
After the View Filter field in the Explorer Panel you will now find a filter button.
Pressing it will reset the filter. Right clicking on it and the Quick View Filters menu is shown.

Just as the selection menu above you have a couple of items that that you can customize yourself.
The customized items are shared and are used both for selection and view filters.

The two last menus items are for quickly changing the View Filters options.
Changing this settings will change them for all opened Explorer Panel tabs.

Thursday, December 12, 2013

The Exploer Panel in Multi Commander have support icons of small (16px) and large (32px) size.
But there have been many requests for more size options.
And in the next release it will be possible to select small/medium/large/x-large.

In Explorer Panel settings you can now configure for more icon sizes.

However medium icon size format can give you blurry icons. This is because a lot of files and registered icons for file extensions, Do not include a medium sized icon.
If an icon at a specific size is not found a large one is loaded and it is then scaled down to medium size (24px)

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Customizing the Tab look with Colors and Tab Name is something that also been asked for.

And from the next version that will be possible.

The default tab colors for the different panel types can be configured under core settings.

And you can also configure it if it should show the Icon or not or if colors should be allowed at all or not.

Explorer Panel

For the Explorer Panel tab you can configure the tab look even more.

Under settings you can configure how it should name the tab. If the device part should be included or not.
It is also possible to change so that icon will be the folder icon instead of the device icon.
(However that is not working 100% because the icon have to already be cached for this to work)

But there is even more. By right clicking on a tab you can now select to change just the tab properties for that tab.

The Tab properties window allows you to configure the tab color and tab name for that tab.
This settings is keep for that tab between restarts. (But lost if you close the tab)